Friday, January 6, 2012

It's All Kid's Play!

A fabulous blog buddy of mine, Jean Oram, has set up a great website for anyone who has kids. It's called It's All Kid's Play and it's a TON of fun! With so many screens calling for kids' attention now, it's important to have a lot of activites that are easy, ready to go, and most of all fun.

That's where Jean comes in. Her site has 32 categories (not including jokes and book recommendations) of activities ranging from arts and crafts to sports, to challenges, to outdoor activities, to games, etc. This site is great for parents looking to cure their children's boredom blues, reconnect with some games, looking for party activities, or just looking for a way to bring more free play (unstructured, creative, child-directed play into their lives). Let's take a tour of a few of those sections...

Tricky Business: This has those goofy challenges kids (and grown up kids) love. For example, armpit farts, can't touch the floor games, catching stacked pennies off your elbow, lick your elbow (can't do that one), making salt/sugar crystals, etc. Tricky challenges are a great way to get kids back to the basics of playing. They challenge our thinking, the way we think the world works, test our boundaries and skills, and are a sure fire way to start the giggles!

Car Rides: I feel this area of play is especially important these days as the family vehicle is one of the few places kids get to engage in free play these days. Families spend a lot of time in their vehicles commuting, driving to organized sports, etc., and it is a great place for families to reconnect and play. These days the majority of kids don't know how to entertain themselves in the vehicle without some sort of screen. On the car rides page I have a bunch of games that are great to help develop communication skills, visual skills, critical thinking skills, even math skills (and so much more). There is also a printable PDF with MORE games (than listed on the webpage) and a link to word games as well. There are so many things to do in the car! (Example games: I Spy, Round Up, How Long Will it Take?, License Plate games.)

Get out of the House: This section is great for families who are looking for something to do (heck, you don't even need to have kids for many of these!), planning a staycation, or planning an outing. This section includes many family friendly ideas on how to get everyone up, out, and moving. Spending time with your family increases individual resiliency whether you are 5 or 75. (Farmer's Market, go-carting, people watching, laser tag, go to the library, indoor wall climbing, etc.).

Those are fabulous! And those are only 3 of those 32 categories. You've got to check out the rest. I bet it'll make you want to play a game RIGHT NOW - whether you're a kid or not!

Jean and I originally met over at Agent Query Connect, where Jean is a super moderator for the site. If you haven't visited, it's an great place where writers at all stages of their careers hang out. Jean's blog is all about writing and you can also find Jean on twitter talking about writing as herself @jeanoram and representing her kids' site as @KidsPlay

What's your favourite kids' game?

Jean's got a Facebook page up and going - it looks great! Check it out too :)

I'm thankful to live in an area that has so many wonderful things to do outside, either alone or as a family. What a great site with wonderful ideas! Thanks for passing the information along. I'm particularly going to look for things to do in the car.

My children have all grown up but us adults still like playing. We've just come back from an activity holiday where children aren't allowed and I've spent the week playing at line dancing, zumba, singing, bridge, canaster and eating! We would have played Scrabble but we ran out of time.

[I'm trying to keep Mr A from seeing your article about the delicious fudge toffee on your other blog. He'd eat a whole tray full given the chance!]

Anita, I hear you on turning into a TV zombie. Sometimes it's just so easy at the end of a week.

Janet, I hope you enjoy the activities!

Shannon, what luck to live in an area with so many things to do outside. We ended up moving to a new town that had more family friendly things to do. It's wonderful. Well worth the move for us. Enjoy the car games!

That's a hard one! I think it would have to be Guess the Animal. (Just like 20 Questions, but we only pick animals. One person guesses and animal and the rest of the players have to ask 'yes' or 'no' questions until they have enough info they can figure out what the animal is.) We play it on all our long car rides.

I forgot to mention that I have been tweeting an activity everyday as well as article links and other fun stuff on Twitter @KidsPlay and that for those of you who love to Facebook, I will be starting a Facebook page where those posts will be shared as well. (I know not everyone is into Twitter.)

hi Jemi. Now that I have a Kindle Fire I can combine two events: reading time and kids play time. I take them to the park and let them loose for a couple hours, then have quiet time to read. Its a win win situation.

It's great to see so many people enthusiastic about kids! It gives me such hope!

I have started a Facebook page for anyone who is interested in more free play activities and ideas for kids and families, slow parenting, or just looking for a place to connect with other parents and caregivers. It's here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-All-Kids-Play/310799765624876 (I hope it's okay to share it here, Jemi?) There isn't much there yet, but I plan to share my tweets and ideas on that page.

Car games - YES!! I need those! I am so SICK Of all my old fav movies because the kids watch them all the time in the car DVD. Need something different and you're right, its a good family time because they are a captive audience.

I hear you, Margo! Captive audiences are good--especially if you can turn it around so it isn't you listening to the same movie over and over. ;)

Matthew, your 15-year-old might enjoy some of the tricky challenges such as balancing a stack of pennies on their bent elbow and then trying to catch them all with that hand as they straighten their arm. Very tricky! We used to do that on the school bus allll the time when we were that age. (More instructions on that trick in the "tricky challenges" section of the website.)

Jemi, I think the record for pennies caught was something like 14! There were a bunch of us who spent hours and hours on the bus challenging each other. My record was maybe two or three. ;p I think I should try again, I think my coordination is better than it was then.

Kathi! A fellow Oram! Hello! There aren't that many with our spelling out there. Although I hear there are some in England, Australia, and somewhere in Africa. :)